Guardian gardening
by LazerTH
Summary: Three Guardians assemble to save a small human village from the Fallen and Cabal.
1. Chapter 1

GUARDIAN GARDENING

By LazerTH

\- CHAPTER ONE -

Sunlight shone green through the leafy canopy. A squad of Fallen skittered lightly over the rich black soil. Nimble Vandals hugged the ground, all six of their limbs flowing in swift silence. Puny four-limbed Dregs scampered on foot. On point, their big strong Captain scouted with all four of her wary glowing blue eyes.

The squad broke through the tree line into a small clearing blanketed in orange and yellow flowers. Heedless of the alien beauties they trampled, the speedy squad sent sunfire petals flying through the air. At the opposite end of the clearing, a lone figure stood up suddenly, dropping his trowel and unslinging his rifle in one fluid motion.

"YOU ETHER-SUCKERS ARE GOING TO KILL ALL MY LILIES!"

Most Fallen don't understand human language, so they slid into defensive positions and opened fire, crushing even more orange-yellow flowers with their slinking movements. The gardener expressed his displeasure using automatic gunfire. All four Dregs sprayed airy white Ether over the field before they had a chance to throw their grenades. The four Vandals were quicker and climbed trees, shimmying up the trunks like giant spiders. While they disappeared among the blossoming branches to find sniper's nests, their Captain distracted their assailant with bursts of fiery shrapnel.

Green eyes flashing murder, the red-haired human leaped thirty feet into the sky, the blazing sun on his back. At this sight, the Captain's heart quickened. This was no mere human wearing dirty denim overalls and jeans. In a blue puff of Ether, she teleported backward into the forest and emitted a shrill clicking noise. Her Vandals stowed their shock rifles then zoomed after her, leaping among the verdant branches like monkeys.

The gardener landed gently on his knees among his dead flowers. He touched their crushed petals, their sweet fragrance mixing with the bitter stink of Ether. "Twelfth incursion this month. What's so interesting about my garden?"

A small red star-shaped machine drifted over the flowers. Its cyclopean yellow eye twitched back and forth.

"THESE FLOWERS REFLECT THE SUN."

"You're not helpful, Solaire."

"YOU SHOULD BURN THE FALLEN," the little machine said.

"And the entire forest with them? No thanks."

Quick footsteps brought other humans to the clearing: two teenagers holding rifles.

"Master Yi Yi, we heard the alarm!" the girl shouted.

"Filthy Fallen again, Master! Where are the rest?" the boy shouted, gesturing to the four bodies.

The gardener stowed his rifle and stood. "They ran away."

"Fallen don't run away!" the girl snorted, scrunching up her nose. "None of the others did."

"Cullen, why is this a problem?" Yi Yi asked while looking at the bodies left behind.

The boy's mouth dropped open. He blinked a few times and said, "They'll report that this a high-value area. Oh, they'll send skiffs next!"

"And why is _that_ a problem, Cass?" Yi Yi asked, pointing upward.

She held up her hand. "Airdrops will draw the Cabal's attention… ugh, the farms are nearby! We must protect the food supply!"

Yi Yi nodded. "Let's gather my fireteam."


	2. Chapter 2

\- CHAPTER TWO -

Rain lashed the metal platform, which shifted and shook with every ocean wave that crashed against its struts below. A giant Hive knight strode forth with heavy steps, its chitinous yellow carapace slick and sickly in the dim light. It pointed its wicked cleaver at the lone figure on the opposite end of the platform and bellowed a challenge in the profane Hive tongue. Its gurgling roar was met with a single question:

"DO YOU HAVE STAIRS IN YOUR HOUSE?"

Most Hive don't understand human language, so the Knight began its stampede, its three green eyes burning with death light. The lone figure raised one hand and called upon the Void, the darkness between stars, That Which Lies Beneath The Universe. The Void heard her call, and it coalesced into a mighty round shield on her arm that flared and shimmered with quantum forces beyond mortal ken. Shield first, she charged the Knight, her steps so powerful that they dented the metal.

The Knight screamed with hideous delight when it saw its challenge met, and thrust its wicked cleaver point-first, the edge so sharp that it parted raindrops where the Knight thundered past. The warriors clashed with deafening sound and blinding light, momentarily blasting the entire platform dry with sheer fury. But the rain kept falling as the Hive knight sailed through the air, its broken cleaver spinning and lost in another direction. Its massive frame plunged into the cold, cold ocean, instantly lost among the waves, never to surface, never again to hear Savathun's song.

The lone figure skidded to a halt on the edge of the platform, dismissing her Void shield with a shake of her hand. Her glowing blue eyes peered over the edge to confirm her foe's demise.

"THE HUMANS ARE PROTECTED," she said, blue light gleaming from her metal throat.

There was a tiny _ahem_ from the small blue spherical machine floating at her shoulder. It blinked its one eye in the rain. "Shover-2, there is a message from Yi Yi. He says that he is standing by the stairs."

"SHOVER AND PUSHER WILL PROTECT HIM," she replied, then called her jumpship.


	3. Chapter 3

\- CHAPTER THREE -

Red grass waved in the slight breeze beside the milky white river that tumbled over rocks and off a cliff. On the riverbank, a lone figure lay in wait, crouched within the spherical ruin of a dead Vex construct.

A skiff decloaked over the field of red grass and white soil. An automated hovering mining drill descended from the ship, its bright blue laser boring into the ground. The skiff also deposited a full squad of Fallen to safeguard the collection device, which was a very shiny chrome machine sitting on the ground.

They were here to extract glimmer – shiny blue cubes once used as a Golden Age power source, but now hoarded as universal currency among all the sentient races inhabiting this solar system. If there was one thing that united the warring races, it was money. Glimmer was the _good stuff._

A half-second after Fallen feet hit the ground, a solitary glowing purple arrow flew from the shadows. It missed all of them, piercing the empty ground. Then a maw of darkness opened up where the arrow struck. The gaping mouth of the Void, full of distant stars and strange constellations, reached out to each Fallen soldier with a gravity tentacle, ensnaring them all in a huge ghastly purple web.

Paralysed by the gravitational pull, unable to lift their leaden limbs far less their weapons, all the Fallen could do was die. A single gunshot rang out, a single head exploded, but then all at once the entire squad perished, sharing the fate of their headless teammate. Such was the insidious power of the Void, which devoured all and turned away none.

A lone figure slinked out of the shade into the sunlight, pistol barrel still smoking. Her eyes glowed inhuman orange, the colour of starfire. Her skin and mohawk hairstyle were an alien shade of violet, and her lips were the colour of full-bodied wine. She stepped over alien corpses to slap a demolition charge onto the glimmer receptacle. A second skiff decloaked and deposited a second squad of Fallen almost on top of her. Before _their_ feet hit the ground, however, a shining purple bow appeared in her hands and shot another arrow into the soil. Another Void mouth opened, full of grasping tentacles and paralytic horror punctuated by a single gunshot and mass death. The Void was insatiable, feeding on _their_ destruction yet leaving _her_ miraculously unharmed. The Void knew the hand that fed it, and it was pleased with her offerings.

When the shiny chrome machine burst open, spilling its glimmer guts everywhere, the drill sucked up all spilt glimmer, shut down and returned to the waiting skiff above. The skiffs retreated at maximum speed over the horizon to look for a safer mining spot, but nowhere was safe. The grim reaper rode a Sparrow over hill and vale. The Void would feed. They would all die.

The lone figure performed this grisly process three times in total, each time killing two full squads of Fallen. So much death, so much glimmer. After the sixth squad croaked and the third receptacle burst, the mining drill exploded, unable to contain the triple volume of glimmer. Fallen greed was its undoing. The huge pile of glimmer crashed into a shallow lake of real water.

The lone figure stood upon the pile, claiming it as her own. She opened her hand and with a flash of light, a small black diamond-shaped machine appeared on her palm. Its sole white eye flicked between her and the pretty little blue cubes beneath her feet.

"TRANSMAT?"

"You know the drill, Tac."

"PUN," the little machine groaned, setting about its work of preparing the huge quantity of money for teleportation directly to her jumpship. No sharing. A new squad of Fallen dropped from a skiff about a hundred metres away, but their leader was very tall and very strong, flexing all six of his thick arms: a ketch Captain, commander of an enormous ship capable of pillaging an entire planet. He sucked the finest and largest volumes of Ether, unlike the smaller skiff Captains, Vandals and Dregs that peeked out nervously from behind his huge legs.

"A challenge," the lone figure said with a smile curling her lovely lips.

"CALLISTO!" the small robot rebuked her.

"Yeah, yeah, I've got your back."

Callisto loosed yet another Void arrow at the ketch Captain. Learning from the mistakes of his many recently deceased subordinates, he teleported out of harm's way in a large puff of blue Ether. While his personal honour guard did their jobs of dying in his place, he leveled his massive shrapnel launcher at the humanoid avatar of entropy.

Blasts of burning dross glanced off her personal forcefield while she leveled her own big weapon: a cyberpunk rocket launcher that materialised with a flash of light, just as the tiny talking robot had. Unlike the sleek chrome masterworks of the City foundries, this weapon had exposed wires and rusty metal plates supporting a fat bulbous head, whose myriad launch tubes formed a honeycomb pattern. This dubious device spewed a noisy swarm of tiny seeker missiles.

The ketch Captain's big body betrayed him, and took the full brunt of the assault. Small but rapid explosions propelled him into the air. He splashed down in a lake of milky white liquid – Vex radiolarian fluid, the lifeblood of pesky time-traveling machines. With his personal forcefield destroyed, the Vex mind fluid began to eat him alive.

Some scholars theorise that this disgusting white ooze is actually a liquid species whose individuals are too small for the eye to see. Some scholars assert that the evil red-eyed Vex are merely robot bodies that these microscopic creatures use to interact with our macro world, much the same way the City built robot bodies for their AI servants. Whatever the truth is, the ketch Captain died horribly, drowning and burning simultaneously.

Callisto stowed her weapon, then danced a victory jig on the glimmer pile until Tac finished transmatting it.

"MESSAGE," the little machine announced.

Callisto listened to Yi Yi's voice. She nodded. "Was getting bored of this place anyway."


	4. Chapter 4

\- CHAPTER FOUR -

Alarms bells spurred villagers out of their wooden huts and into the cobblestone streets, a ragtag assembly of humanity that dwelt in this European frontier forest. Some were City refugees, some were here by choice, but most were here because this was their motherland. If there is one thing humanity does well, it is reproduction, _especially_ when the species is on the verge of extinction.

"Good morning everyone," said Yi Yi, still dressed in dirty gardening clothes. He stood on a metal platform that acted as the village square, flanked by his teenage students. Several hundred sleepy faces looked up to him in silence. Not even the babies cried. "Fallen skiffs will arrive by nightfall. Cabal harvesters will investigate. I believe they will fight each other, but our crops will suffer collateral damage. Instead, my fireteam will draw _all_ of their attention away from the farms and village."

On cue, two jumpships swooped down over the village square. The villagers cheered, recognising the glossy silver-blue Runereed and the shiny teal-purple Regent Redeemer. Their respective pilots transmatted onto the village square in flashes of blue and purple light, decked in lustrous armour the same colour as their respective ships: Shover-2 and Callisto. They stood with Yi Yi who, in a flash of orange light, now wore glorious red and gold robes.

Then Shover-2 shoved Yi Yi off the platform and into the mud. She bent over him with a question in her glowing blue eyes.

"I am protected," Yi Yi replied with a thumbs-up.

"SPACE HAS A TERRIBLE SECRET," she agreed, then helped him up with one hand.

With muddy face, hair and robes, Yi Yi finished his speech to the villagers. "My fireteam will defend you, but you must teach your children to defend themselves from the Fallen and Cabal. Our vaults are open to you. Cullen and Cass will distribute gear. Let's protect our home!"

The villagers cheered again, then dispersed to organise their militia. The two jumpships moved out of the village airspace to land in an empty field beside a third jumpship: the radiant red-gold Breath of Stars. Three little machines drifted out of their docking ramps to meet each other, winking their cyclopean eyes.

"Hello, Tac and Solaire!"

"PUSHER. SOLAIRE."

"TAC, PUSHER, BE LIKE THE SUN! PAINT YOURSELVES GOLD THIS INSTANT."

"It's so good to meet you fellows again," said Pusher, smiling as much as a tiny robot with only one eye and no mouth can smile. "Shover killed a whole nest of Hive on Titan before we left."

"GLIMMER. NESSUS," Tac said, summarising the days Callisto spent hoarding glittering cubes like a draconic Ahamkara.

"YI YI CULTIVATES PHOTOSYNTHETIC ORGANISMS. HUMANS EAT THEM. THAT MEANS HUMANS EAT _THE SUN!"_ Solaire remarked with a twirl of his shell.

"I wish you Ghosts wouldn't gossip so much," said Cass, who was wheeling a cart from one of the ships. "It's unprofessional."

"You can criticise us _after_ you've lived three hundred years," Pusher shot back.

"Is _that_ how old this gear is?" asked Cullen, who was also moving weapons and armour from another ship.

"Don't be silly!" Pusher snorted. "The City foundries resumed operations after the Red War. Even the best metal would oxidise to dust after centuries, Golden Age supertech be damned."

Cullen and Cass spent the whole morning outfitting the militia. The biggest men and women donned Shover's bulky heavy armour, the average-sized villagers wore Callisto's medium armour, and the smallest wrapped Yi Yi's plated robes about their bodies as best they could. The weapons were less of a logistical problem, for they accommodated both large hands and small. From rocket launchers to sidearms, every able-bodied man, woman and teenager carried at least three tools for ballistic engagement.

After lunch, veteran villagers assisted the three warriors in weapons training. The average frontier person was accustomed to using pistols, rifles and shotguns for small skirmishes, but they had never seen anything like these… these were tools designed to _end_ wars. Training began with three basic disciplines: muzzle, trigger and ammo. Then they taught stances: how to stand, kneel or lie prone without injuring themselves or each other from weapon recoil or backblast. Finally, they taught how to load ammunition. Only then did they allow the villagers to start shooting at crude targets set up well away from anything flammable.

It was a beautiful sight. The targets exploded, the ground exploded, the rocks and trees behind the targets exploded, and Yi Yi started cursing loudly about burning the whole damn forest down before the enemy even got here. Thankfully, the villagers were able to contain the blaze they started. Solaire danced and sang among the flames and was quite put out when someone chucked water over him.

Then the evening came, bringing with it the unnerving sight of four skiffs decloaking less than a kilometer from the farm fences. Yi Yi put down his binoculars and put on his helmet.

"Cullen, Cass, protect the village from stragglers. We'll do the rest."

"Yes, Master!" the teenagers shouted with a salute.

While the three warriors mounted their Sparrows and zipped away, the villagers waved farewell. Some waved handkerchiefs; others waved tattered flags of long dead warriors. They were ready.

"Amazing how much time you waste here," Callisto said over their private fireteam comms.

"Hey, we're not all godslayers like Axis-15," Yi Yi snapped. "Some of us plant corn."


	5. Chapter 5

\- CHAPTER FIVE -

First contact took place along a rocky river valley where clear water wound its way between trees under the orange flames of sunset. Callisto took point, ensnaring a full Fallen squad with the voracious Void. Seeing more than ten of their comrades die in a single blow, the remaining squads broke formation.

Airborne drones and Dregs lay down covering fire for Vandals who disappeared among the trees to find sniper nests. Marauders cloaked and adopted flanking positions. Wretches simply charged with their arc spears, so they were the first to go down in a hail of gunfire. Servitor machines shielded their Captains, who launched barrages of burning shrapnel. Shover-2 projected a unidirectional forcefield to block the frontal assault while her friends turned around to pick off Marauders and Vandals who thought invisibility, distance and darkness would give them an edge. Nothing escaped the warrior's eyes, mainly because their helmets provided thermal imaging.

A safe distance from the melee, hidden among branches, the three Ghosts watched on.

"Isn't this exciting?" Pusher said, wiggling back and forth in his shell.

"BORING. NOT THE SUN," Solaire said, staring at the sunset instead.

"CABAL," Tac warned.

Huge iron cabbages rained from the sky to back up a single Harvester dropship. The cabbages melted to deploy space rhinos; squat square-shaped humanoids in heavy armour who wielded inelegant slug rifles. Finding their mortal enemies already engaged with their other mortal enemies, the Cabal opened fire on both.

"Now it's a party," Callisto said, exploiting the Cabal's perfect military formation and closed ranks with another Void arrow. Too late to save a dozen of their number from an awful graviton demise, the Centurions bellowed a command to disperse with jump packs. Belying their heavy bodies, the Legionaries and Centurions floated with grace and poise through the sky, firing weapons as they did. Phalanx remained grounded, using their huge handheld shields to form a unified forcefield wall. They pointed their guns over the top of the wall and fired.

With fire now coming from two sides, the three warriors also broke ranks and moved among the enemy forces. Each was his or her own general, requiring no team stratagem or command, knowing when to advance and retreat, knowing when their friend needed support and when they needed space. Speaking of which, Callisto and Yi Yi gave Shover-2 a wide berth when she leaped forty feet straight up and charged her fists with electric Arc energy, the impulse of Life itself, Binder Of All That Is. Her fists smashed into the Phalanx shield wall like a blue meteorite, vaporising the war rhinos, their forcefields and their hope with an electric wave surge. She was not done. She pursued the Centurions next. Their mortar shells broke against her helmet like rain on a tin roof. Her crackling electrified body tackled each of them in a blue blur, busting through their shields and armour with devastating results. Then her light faded, and she had to project another forcefield to hide from retaliatory fire, including missiles from the Cabal dropship. Big displays draw lots of attention.

"She's so feisty. I like the shield, but this is more effective against large numbers," Pusher commented, sitting on top of Tac, who was in turn seated atop Solaire. They had formed a Ghost totem pole and taken a selfie.

"HAVOC," Tac agreed.

"THE SUN ALSO RISES," Solaire said, then abruptly floated upward, knocking Pusher and Tac out of the tree. "YES! _YES!_ _ **BE THE SUN!"**_

For a moment everyone wondered whether the sun had indeed decided to rise again, but no, it was Yi Yi. Solar energy, the sustainer of worlds, The Beginning And The End, poured from his body in cataracts of fire. Great flaming wings bore him aloft above the battlefield. He held a blazing sword. Every swipe of that divine weapon flung a crescent firebolt, melting Servitors, their Captains and Marauders. Yi Yi was careful to avoid the trees and river, so when the light faded, mundane bullets replaced celestial splendour.

There were still Vandals and Legionaries to deal with, but neither group remained standing a few seconds later, shredded by the triple salvo. Without its ground support, the Cabal dropship's slow, clumsy missiles could no longer pin down their marks. Three different rocket launchers scattered its parts across the valley.

But what of the village? Unseen by anyone, the Fallen female Captain – who had caused all of this chaos with her foolish scout report – had snuck into the village with a squad of Marauders. They had all used cloaking devices, and knew that they would find easy prey here. They had not met any guards in the streets, nor automated drones, nor patrol robots. Pathetic. They would deny their hated adversaries a victory by slaying their weak mortal pets and retreating to fight another day. The Captain decloaked and blasted the nearest hut to ashes, raising a clicking warcry.

The shout died in her throat when, out of the rubble, two heavily armoured figures stood up, shrugging burning debris off their metal shoulders. One of them was cradling a crying baby, who was perfectly unharmed thanks to her mother's quick reflexes. The Captain took in this sight, shrieked in abject horror and teleported away. She left her bewildered Marauders behind to die in a concentrated and highly coordinated assault from the windows of neighbouring huts. The villagers raised their own warcry, guns held high.

That Captain would go on to report that their immortal adversaries were now somehow capable of reproduction, so all was lost.

Naturally, the warriors heard the explosion from the direction of the village, so they raced back there on their Sparrows. What they met were the grim, determined faceplates of the militia who, led by Cullen and Cass, had decided to go check on the main battle. The teenagers flung off their helmets and dropped their guns with joy at the safe return of their teachers and defenders.

As one body, the village surrounded the warriors with adulation, claiming them as their own. Yi Yi held up his hands. When the crowd stepped back, the three warriors began synchronised dancing. They had brought death to their enemies, and victory brings celebration. Solaire loaded a music file and an ancient song predating the Golden Age blasted from his shell's speakers so that the rest of the village could join in…

 _Jump and let them see_

 _Love and unity_

 _One big family_

 _Togetherness!_


End file.
